Dubai Real Estate Boom Sparks Investor Rush Despite Warnings
Welcome to the Mideast Money newsletter, where we chronicle the intersection of money and power in a region that's become one of the most influential in global finance. I'm Laura Gardner Cuesta, Bloomberg News' Middle East equity capital markets reporter, filling in for Adveith Nair.
This week: Saudi Aramco's borrowing spree, HSBC's job cuts and a plunge in private equity fundraising. But first, let's break down the broader signals from two recent IPOs in the region.
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Crypto Treasury Companies Are Bullish on Bitcoin and XRP. But Don't Invest.
Start-ups are piling Bitcoin and XRP onto their balance sheets for a few reasons. It's questionable whether their shareholders are getting any value. Owning these assets directly is probably the safer option. 10 stocks we like better than Bitcoin › Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) (formerly called MicroStrategy) famously pioneered the Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) treasury concept, buying the crypto and holding it on the company's balance sheet. Now, a crop of start-ups promises to provide the same kind of leveraged exposure to select digital assets for anyone willing to buy their shares. But before you hand any treasury operator a dime, it's important to look at who really captures the value they're advertising, and to understand how the existence of these companies might be favorable for the coins you hold. In a nutshell, crypto treasury companies are businesses that accumulate cryptocurrency assets such as Bitcoin and XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) on their corporate balance sheets. Their aim is to provide investors with indirect exposure to these digital assets while theoretically offering some diversification or additional value compared to investors just buying and holding the main underlying asset. They are a very recent phenomenon, and most will probably not survive even if their main assets do fine during the next decade or so. Over the last quarter, at least five companies launched or pivoted to stockpiling coins as their main strategy, or as a pillar of their financing strategy for their other lines of business. Hong Kong-based logistics group Reitar Logtech Holdings just filed to buy as many as 15,000 Bitcoins, worth roughly $1.5 billion at today's prices. Another company, Twenty One Capital, wants to procure 42,000 Bitcoins, enough to rank third worldwide among corporate holders. Renewable energy player VivoPower International raised $121 million to start a $100 million XRP purchase program. Two smaller private firms announced their intent to form XRP reserves within 24 hours of that deal. More might be on the way. But why are these assets so appealing to hold, and why would investors want to buy shares of a business that only manages assets they don't have any control over? In short, chief financial officers are seeing that low yields on relatively safe assets they already hold, like U.S. Treasuries, look even punier in comparison to the meteoric run-up in prices for assets like XRP and Bitcoin during the past 10 years. They likely figure that a small coin allocation offers a hedge against inflation, without as much risk as an investment in stocks -- though it's not clear that they're correct on that latter point. Furthermore, buying and holding cryptocurrencies means that a company doesn't have to take on any risk of making capital investments in value-generating equipment, nor put hardly any of their operational expenses toward labor, like most companies do. The catch is that every one of these new crypto treasury companies is banking on the same set of assets, and the same infrastructure to support them. Therefore, none of them have any economic moat, nor do they have any competitive advantage. And that means that over the long term, they are more likely to be bad investments than the assets they hold. For example, VivoPower's deal depends on BitGo for cold storage of its coins. Reitar's prospectus lists Coinbase Prime and Anchorage Digital as backup custodians. Insurance, auditing, chain attestations, and cold-storage logistics are effectively off-the-shelf services, which makes them great for operational security, but terrible for outperforming competitors. In other words, if you invest in these crypto treasury businesses, you are paying a premium for coin exposure that's being diluted by the company's need to pay overhead. A skeptical investor might also ask whether picking up shares in these crypto warehouses is safer than holding coins directly. The answer is "not really." Balance-sheet leverage not only amplifies the upside, but also the downside if prices swoon, leaving investors with losses. On the brighter side, assuming that demand from crypto treasury adopters keeps rising, the existence of supply scarcity favors buying and holding the coins themselves. Twenty One's goal of 42,000 Bitcoins alone is equivalent to almost 93 days of global Bitcoin mining issuance. Add Reitar, VivoPower, and a dozen smaller imitators, and the circulating float of coins available for public trading will shrink. None of that accrues uniquely to the corporate holders; it accrues to the protocol. Therefore, the easiest way to surf the wave here is to buy and hold a disciplined position in the digital assets these companies chase. Lastly, remember that volatility cuts both ways. If these crypto treasuries are forced to dump their coins to meet margin calls, prices can swing more violently than what's normal for crypto. Over long time horizons, assuming scarcity and consistent adoption remain intact, equity holders will be forced to eat management fees, dilution, and execution risk that they did not bargain for, whereas those who simply hold the coins won't need to pay for any extras whatsoever. Before you buy stock in Bitcoin, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Bitcoin wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $674,395!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $858,011!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 997% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 2, 2025 Alex Carchidi has positions in Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Crypto Treasury Companies Are Bullish on Bitcoin and XRP. But Don't Invest. was originally published by The Motley Fool Sign in to access your portfolio
